


do you look through your young eyes

by millepertuis



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Reactions to Emotional Vulnerability, F/F, Repressed Trauma And Its Pitfalls, Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29274099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millepertuis/pseuds/millepertuis
Summary: “Catra?” the blond little girl asks, voice trembling. Her eyes dart to the side. They can’t see the battle from here, but they can hear it, the shouts, the sound of metal against metal.“Bring her here,” Shadow Weaver says over the comm.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 175
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	do you look through your young eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Katherine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/gifts).



> Title from _Two-Minute Personality Test_ by Jonathan Safran Foer. _Your earliest memories: do you look through your young eyes, or look at your young self?_
> 
> Additional warnings for past food insecurity and past injuries to children.
> 
> Pay no attention to the timeline behind the curtain.

It's late at night. Everyone else is asleep. They should be, too, but Catra tossed and turned, and tossed and turned some more, and Adora sighed and held up her blanket so Catra could sneak into her bed. They huddle together, the blanket pulled over their heads, their knees bumping against each other. Adora can’t see for shit in the dark, but Catra can watch her, and does. Her warm sleepy eyes, her ears that are still a bit too big for her head, even after her last growth spurt. The red angry line on her chin, where Catra scratched her during training. Catra thumbs at it now. Adora hisses a little but doesn’t pull back.

“I didn’t mean to,” Catra whispers. She does mean to, sometimes. She’s better at this part of their training than Adora is—the hurting part. Adora doesn’t like it, but Catra likes being good at things, even when it’s things she doesn’t like to do. And it does feel good, sometimes, to hurt people, to prove that she can hurt people, the way it feels good to claw at her itchy scabs, before the skin tears again. The way it feels good to be mean to Adora sometimes, when Adora is laughing with someone else, or refusing to leave her alone when Catra wants to be. It always feels awful, afterwards, but for a minute or two it feels good.

But she didn’t mean to this time. It hasn’t been long since Shadow Weaver stopped cutting her claws, and Catra still isn’t quite used to it.

“It’s okay,” Adora whispers back.

She reaches up to take Catra’s hand in hers, probably so Catra can’t keep picking at the scratch. Catra lets Adora hold her hand. Her tail, lashing back and forth, sends tremors along the blanket.

“Do you ever think about what’s out there?”

Adora blinks at her slowly. Catra thinks for a moment that her voice was too low, and Adora didn’t understand. She doesn’t want to say it again. It doesn’t feel safe, even here, in a whisper under the blankets while everyone else sleeps and Adora holds her hand.

“What’s out there? Like Beast Island?”

“Like Etheria.”

Adora pinches her lips. “Do you?” she asks, voice so low it’s more breath than sound.

Catra rubs the pulp of her thumb over the side of Adora’s. They’re not allowed to leave the Fright Zone, of course Catra wonders about it. What it looks like. What the people are like. Whether there are people like Catra there, or anywhere.

“We could go look.”

Adora bows her head closer. “You know it’s not allowed.”

“So what?”

“So we’d get punished.”

“Then let’s not come back at all.”

The corner of Adora’s lips ticks up. She always tries to pretend she doesn’t want to get pulled into Catra’s games, but she isn’t very good at the lying part of their training either. “Where would we even go?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere’s gotta be better than here.”

“It’s not so bad.”

Adora probably can’t see Catra’s eyebrows arching, but she must know her enough to tell, anyway, because she bumps her knee into Catra’s and says, “We’re together. That’s already good enough, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Catra says, a little too loud. Her heartbeat trips over itself.

Adora smiles, a quick flash of teeth. “Maybe,” she says, squeezing Catra’s hand, “maybe after we win the war, we could go together. See the world we saved. Maybe it’ll be okay then.”

 _How can you still think we’re the good guys?_ Catra thinks. But she says: “Okay.”

Adora smiles again, and then yawns. “You have to tell me, then, if you want to leave. You can’t go without me.”

“Like I would.”

“No, you have to promise.”

“Okay, okay, I promise. I won’t go anywhere without you. I look out for you, and you look out for me, remember?”

“That’s right,” Adora says, eyes slipping shut. She wiggles a little closer. “Me too,” she whispers. “I won’t ever leave without you.”

Catra is staring at that same scratch now, even though it has long faded—turned into a think silver line she can only see when she’s looking closely and the light hits it just right. That scratch is red and angry again.

“Catra?” the blond little girl asks, voice trembling. Her eyes dart to the side. They can’t see the battle from here, but they can hear it, the shouts, the sound of metal against metal.

“Bring her here,” Shadow Weaver says over the comm.

“What’s going on? Where are we? Why do you look like that?”

She’s so small, about the same size as the sword that’s dropped on the ground. Were they ever that small? Shadow Weaver made sure kids had enough to eat, once they showed some promise, but in the early years they were always hungry. Her wrists are so thin. Her knuckles are scraped red, and there’s a yellow bruise on the edge of her jaw—and that scratch, on her chin.

The ray gun was supposed to change her back. Catra didn’t really listen beyond that. It was supposed to change her DNA back to before she was She-Ra.

She supposes it did.

Catra throws the gun away, as far as she can.

Shadow Weaver is shrieking something in her ear.

Catra tugs the comm out of her ear, drops it on the ground, and steps on it.

“Catra?” the little girl asks, tone less confused, more scared.

Catra gathers her in her arms, holds her head against her neck. “It’s alright,” she says. “It’s alright, Adora. I’m here.”

It had taken a good deal of finagling, to separate Adora from her friends. Catra had felt quite happy at how well it had all come together. She had already been preparing in her head all the snide comments she’d make to Adora as she brought her back to the Fright Zone in chains.

Now she’s walking her back to the Princesses’ lair.

“I don’t get it. Am I undercover?”

She’s _convincing_ Adora to go back, because the damned brat doesn’t even want to go.

“It’s just where you live now,” Catra says, neatly glossing over betrayals and months of deep emotional anguish.

“But why? Did we make peace with them?” Adora asks, sounding hopeful.

Catra kicks at a rock. It’s not like she didn’t know already how quick Adora was to jump ship the first time around, does she really have to have a front-row seat to it now? So Adora’s greatest dream is some happy-go-lucky land where everyone is nice and unicorns puke rainbows and Catra has no place at all, or worse, only as some declawed version of herself that isn’t her at all. Whatever. Old news.

“Something like that.”

She feels a bit caged by how close Adora’s sticking to her. She’s obviously spooked, and trying to hide it. Catra didn’t do a great job explaining why she was suddenly a grown-up, but Adora just—trusts her.

Catra can’t get rid of her fast enough.

“Did… Did Shadow Weaver kick us out?”

“Why would she kick you out? You’re her best student.”

“She doesn’t like that—we’re good to each other.”

Catra raises her head sharply. That’s a lot more self-awareness than she expects from Adora at—any age, to be honest.

“Did she say something to you?”

“Just, you know. The regular stuff. She’s dragging you down, she’s making you weak, let go. But I’m not going to listen,” she says, a little fierce. “I don’t want to let go.”

Catra represses the hell out of that.

“There we are!” Catra almost collapses from relief at the sight of the castle. “You walk straight ahead and go in.”

“What? Where are you going?”

 _Probably straight to Beast Island, depending on how mad Shadow Weaver is._ She doesn’t say that to Adora.

“I don’t want to go there without you,” Adora protests, anxious. “What if I give myself away because I can’t remember something?”

“There’s nothing to give away. They’re—your friends,” Catra grits out. “You’re not undercover. They like you. Please go now.”

Adora blinks at her.

She really is so small. They were of a height for most of their childhood. She’s never been taller than Adora. She’s always been the smaller one.

“I can’t go with you.”

“Why not?”

“I—don’t really get along with your new friends.”

Adora frowns. “What? Why?”

“When do I ever get along with anybody?” Catra deflects with a shrug.

“I’ll just go with you, alright, I swear I won’t be a bother, just—”

“No!” Catra says, too sharply. Adora flinches and looks down.

Catra stares at her, wanting to say—some really mean things. But this isn’t the Adora she wants to say them to. This isn’t the Adora that Catra wants to hurt.

Catra takes everything she’s feeling and stamps down on it methodically, without looking straight at it, and then she buries the pieces deep inside.

“It’s fine,” she says when she can breathe steadily again. “I’ll go with you, or whatever.”

Half the tension goes out of Adora’s body, and she reaches for Catra reflexively, before she stops herself.

Catra stamps down on some leftover feelings.

“You can hold onto me, if you want.”

Adora pinches her lips. “I’m not scared,” she says, stepping away from Catra. “I’m not a baby.”

“Maybe I’m scared. Maybe I’ll feel better if you hold onto me.”

Adora grabs for Catra’s hand with both of hers. “Don’t be scared. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Catra looks down at her and—hates her, a little.

They go.

They get intercepted halfway to the castle.

It’s not quite a disaster.

They keep getting distracted from yelling at Catra by how small Adora is. The Princess guy cries and clutches Adora to him until she bites him, then cries some more.

“Glimmer,” he says. “Glimmer, she doesn’t remember me!”

“What are you crying to me for? She doesn’t remember me either!”

“What about me?” the pony says. “Of course, you remember me. Right?”

Adora inches from behind Catra’s back to peek at him. Her eyes sparkle.

Anyway, Catra doesn’t get locked up.

She stays.

“You could have hurt her, but you didn’t,” Sparkles tells her later.

Adora’s flying around on the pony. Peals of laughter reach them every once in a while.

“I _have_ hurt her. Many times. Did you get hit on the head or something?”

Sparkles scowls. “Ugh,” she says. “I tried to be nice. No one can say I didn’t try to be nice!”

The horse flight mellows Adora out a bit, but she sticks close to Catra’s side all through the medical examinations, and eyes warily everyone who tries to talk to her. She tries to bite Sparkles’ mom, too, before Sparkles sends them out of the room.

Bow takes them to Adora’s room, still crying on and off. “You’re so small,” he says. “I really can’t hug you? It’s totally fine that I can’t hug you. No pressure. Here we are! I’m going to go cry about a totally unrelated matter now!”

“Everyone here is so weird,” Adora tells her once he’s ran out.

It takes Catra a while to stop laughing. “Ah, thanks for that,” She wipes the corner of her eyes. “Get some good sleep, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“To your room?”

“My room?” Adora repeats. “You don’t—Where’s your room? Did they separate us?”

“I don’t live here with you, remember?”

Adora frowns, displeased at the reminder. “But—You don’t want to stay in my room with me?”

Catra gets a cold sweat at the idea. They lived together their whole lives. She doesn’t want to see the place where Adora lives without her. She can barely bear to stand here, in this castle, surrounded by the people Adora chose instead of her.

“No,” she says. “There’s—a place here for me.” It’s probably even true, though Catra doesn’t much fancy staying in a jail cell. “I’ll stay there.”

“You won’t—you won’t leave, will you? Not without me?”

Catra breathes.

“I won’t.”

In the morning, the scratch on Adora’s chin has mostly disappeared, and she’s grown a couple of inches.

Glimmer and Bow are determined to make friends with Adora. They’re not great at it. They mostly keep spooking her by being nice with no apparent ulterior motive. Adora takes back up the training regiment she adopted when she was ten halfway through the week, and they join her during her morning drills, and that goes a little better.

Catra has found a good tree overlooking that courtyard and so she catches sight of their efforts from time to time. They take Adora seriously when they spar, without forgetting that she’s so much younger than she usually is. They inevitably ruin all their good will by trying to tell Adora stories of their adventures together, which always makes Adore close right off. They’re not great at pretending to like Catra either, though she can admit she goes out of her way to make them snap. Still, it doesn’t earn them any points with Adora.

“When are we going back to the Horde?” Adora came up to Catra’s tree and made sad eyes until Catra came down to lie in the grass with her. “I don’t like it here. They’re mean to you.”

“I was mean to them first.”

“Were you?” Adora asks, discomfited. “Still,” she rallies. “No one’s allowed to be mean to you.”

Catra hurt her. Catra threw her off a cliff and left her for dead. So what if that Adora was taller and older? It’s this little girl that Catra has hurt, over and over. The little girl she grew up with. The little girl who loved her even when Catra didn’t—doesn’t—deserve to be loved.

“Are you angry with me?” Adora asks, pushing her head against Catra’s shoulder.

“What? No. Why—why would you think that?”

“You don’t—You don’t stay with me. You barely even look at me. You’re not going to leave, are you?”

 _You’re the one who left_ , Catra swallows back, along with another dozen self-destructive things.

“I’m sorry,” she says instead. “I’m just in a bad mood.”

“You’re always in a bad mood.”

“Hey!”

She pinches Adora’s side, gently, careful of her claws. Adora shrieks and giggles.

“You’re really not mad?”

“I could never be mad at you,” Catra says.

Adora smiles widely, and stops pretending she’s not trying to cuddle up to Catra. “You’re allowed to be mad, if you want,” she allows. “Just don’t ever leave me.”

Adora grows years in a matter of days. Her memories seem to come back as she goes along, so that’s probably good news for her new best friends. She’ll be herself again once she hits the right age. It’s not particularly good news for Catra, who ruined a very good—and perfectly executed—plan and then compounded the fault by moving into the enemy camp.

She might try to earn her way back in by selling out information. She’d probably have to actually go out and gather some for that, though, and it feels like too much effort. Mostly, Catra naps.

Sometimes she wakes up and Adora’s nestled against her, drooling on a pillow, or on Catra’s shoulder, and she has to blink back—sleep from her eyes.

Adora’s growing so fast. In a week or two, she’ll be back to herself, and Catra’ll be out on her ear.

And that’s fine. That’s what Catra wants, actually. She doesn’t want to be stuck here babysitting. She wants to go back to the Fright Zone and do—evil, or whatever. She can’t quite get into that mind space right now. All the naps are mellowing her out.

She just wants it to be over already.

Only, Adora slows down.

She jumps to twelve, her hair trailing just past her shoulders, the longest it’s ever been, then to thirteen, past the time another trainee ripped off a chunk of Adora’s hair during training and so Catra cut it all off for her, right under her ears. She grows into fourteen and her awkward phase, when she’d shot up three inches almost overnight, it had seemed back then, and quite literally now.

She just about crawls under fifteen, lean and hunched over herself, and stalls there.

When they were fifteen, Shadow Weaver cut the rations of all the recruits by half, and then she had them fight in pairs until someone couldn’t stand back up, and had the loser forfeit their share of food to the winner. After a month, she halved their portions again.

 _You wouldn’t, right?_ Adora asked her, in the storage unit they hid in during those few months they all turned on each other. _If she made us… You’d never._

Adora mostly managed to disable her opponents without hurting them. Most of the other recruits didn’t bother to try, once they got hungry enough. Catra thrived in that kind of environment, of course, and it had been good for Adora, too, to finally understand she couldn’t just trust anybody. That people just weren’t worthy of it.

Of course, the lesson didn’t stick.

This Adora starts sneaking food in her pockets and the inside of her boots. She gets colder with her little group of hangers-on, and snappier with Catra, too.

“Where do you even go?” she asks. “I thought you didn’t like anyone here.”

“I don’t.”

“I barely see you.”

“I’m not your problem.”

“Of course you are,” Adora says, frowning. “I’m supposed to take care of you.”

“You’re a kid.”

“I’ve always taken care of you.”

Catra doesn’t start screaming in the middle of the mess hall and walks off instead. Adora tries to hold her back, but her friends are coming over, and she withdraws into herself and away from Catra.

She likes them, Catra can tell, but she doesn’t trust them. Adora, at fifteen, knew not to trust anybody.

Catra’s sleep is disturbed by distant laughter. She opens one eye and see through the foliage two Princesses on a walk together. Her eye catches on their hands, locked together, and stays there. When she looks back up, they’re kissing.

Catra almost falls off her tree. She looks around wildly, hunched over herself, but of course Shadow Weaver doesn’t appear to threaten them with Beast Island. They don’t discourage attachment here. They don’t discourage affection. Nobody cares here.

Catra can’t stand it.

The Princesses go and kidnap/rescue Entrapta. Even without She-Ra they’re not quite incompetent enough to fail when they’re given a map of the place.

Entrapta is mostly annoyed by the disruption this causes to her work. She’s already started and discarded another half dozen projects since the ray gun, and has little interest in last week’s work.

“How should I know?” she says, cleaning her goggles with a rag that’s oozing engine oil. “The mutant frogs I tested the ray on all ended up growing all the way back a day or two after you left. If she started growing back at all, I don’t see why she would stop.”

Catra had to wait until the Princesses retired for the night before she could sneak in to interrogate Entrapta. It felt like forever, waiting for them to leave, and Catra isn’t the most patient person to start with. She expresses as much to Entrapta.

“I suppose the magic could be interfering with the process,” Entrapta eventually says.

“But why now? If it was going to interfere, shouldn’t it have it done it when I shot at her, or when she started growing back? Why would it stop her now?”

“No idea. Maybe I could make another ray gun that ages people up?”

“Ugh. Never mind.”

Adora’s waiting outside her door when Catra gets back to her room. She’s wearing that mulish expression that’s so familiar from that particular period of puberty. Catra feels tired just looking at her.

“What do you want?”

Adora scowls harder. “Where have you been? I thought you didn’t like anyone here.”

“I don’t.”

“Then what do you do all day?” she asks as she follows Catra inside. “Why can’t you just stay with me?”

Catra is so tired.

Adora takes about three weeks to get to seventeen and then stops entirely. No one has any idea why.

“It’s not good for her body,” one of the healers says as she’s looking over the readings from one of Entrapta’s machines. “All this energy’s building up. One way or another it’s going to blow.”

They’re under the tree again. Adora’s been sulking and short-tempered all day. Catra’s own temper feels paper-thin.

“Glimmer said—” Adora pinches her lips.

“Oh? Go on, then? What did _Glimmer_ say?”

Catra’s done her best to stay out of sight. She hasn’t picked a fight with anybody. What, even hiding out in her tree and barely letting herself see Adora is already too much for them to bear?

“She said we’re angry with each other. Is that why I left? Because you’re angry with me?”

 _It’s the other way around_.

“I just don’t understand… You’re—the most important person to me. I thought—Stop walking away from me!”

“What?” Catra snaps, swinging back. “What did you think? That we’d be together forever? That I’d—”

“Yes! We promised each other. We said, you look out for me, and I—”

“People lie! Let it go!”

“I don’t want to let go!” Adora yells. The outline of her body shines golden in bursts, on and off, on and off. “You’re going to leave me!”

“Me? You’re the one who left.”

“That’s not true. I wouldn’t. I’d never leave you.”

“But you did. _You_ left _me_. And we have nothing to do with each other anymore. So stop throwing a fit and _grow up_ already.”

“ _No!_ ”

The flash that comes is blinding. When Catra can see again, they’re both kneeling on the ground. Adora’s whole body is shaking. Catra’s tree, and a dozen besides, have been torn from the earth all around them.

 _All that energy_ , the healer said.

It was Adora the whole time. It wasn’t a defect from the ray gun, or a bad reaction, or a self-defense mechanism from She-Ra’s magic. Adora’s the one who didn’t want to grow up. Adora’s been resisting it the whole time.

“Adora,” Catra says, mouth numb. “Adora, you have to let go.”

“I don’t want to. I won’t, I won’t, you can’t make me!”

“It’s hurting you.”

“You’re going to leave me again!”

“It’s better this way. You’re not—You don’t want me back, not really.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is. You just don’t remember yet.”

Adora shakes her head violently, a golden afterimage staying in the air for a few seconds each time.

“I know I love you,” she says. “I’ve always loved you.”

The words hurt. They hurt worse than the gold light. They hurt worse than getting her arm broken in a fight at fifteen. They hurt worse than Adora giving her the other half of her ration bar without a word afterwards.

Something’s been building up in Catra, too. For these weeks she’s been trapped here waiting for Adora to hate her again. For years and years. It’s spilling over now.

She’s afraid there’ll be nothing left standing after this.

“You can’t mean that,” she says wetly, trying not to drown.

“You know I do. I’d never lie to you.”

“You have before. You promised you wouldn’t leave me.”

“I’m sorry. Catra, I’m so sorry. I’ll never leave you again.”

Catra shakes her head, trying not to cry, and not doing a very good job of it.

Adora takes her hands, and Catra lets her.

“Can’t we just have this?”

“What’s this? What do you want, Adora?”

“I—I don’t want to be a little toy soldier. I want… I want to be someone who can protect you, and make you happy. Someone who can be by your side.” She smiles through her tears. “I want to be someone who can be happy, too. What about you? What do you want?”

 _I wanted to hurt you_ , Catra thinks. _Now I don’t know_.

“I wanted to be better than you. I wanted Shadow Weaver to be proud of me.” At last, she says, crying: “I wanted to be someone who could protect you, too.”

Adora’s smile is blinding, but that’s all her. It’s always been all her.

“What about now?” she asks. “What do you want to do now?”

 _Alright_ , Catra thinks. Alright. If you don’t get rid of someone the first time they drool on you, you’ve kind of missed your shot, anyway.

“Come on,” she says, closing her eyes and leaning her forehead against Adora’s. “Let’s grow together.”


End file.
